(no subject)

for randomdreams, a quote from Daniel Menaker's just-out book, A Good Talk:

"Speaking of puns, William Shawn, the longtime editor of The New Yorker, hated them, an aboriginal distaste inherited from the magazine's founder, Harold Ross. I once wrote a 'Talk of the Town' story during a transit strike about hitchhiking around Manhattan, which ended with a dialogue between me and a fellow pedestrian. I asked him how he was getting around, and he said, 'Diesel.' I said, 'Diesel?' He pointed to his feet and said, 'Diesel get me anywhere.' Shawn cut that line and I tried to restore it before it went to press, when the piece was in galley proof. He called me into his office and said in his quiet voice, "Mr. Menaker, I understand you want to put back the original ending of your "Talk" story.' I said, 'I know we usually don't use puns, but this one seemed pretty good.' He smiled in pain and said, 'I think you must not understand that to use this pun would destroy the magazine.'"

(stole this quote from Publishers Weekly's Jan. 11th issue)

Great Magyk Willoughbys Help Rampant Mouse

The Willoughbys, by Lois Lowry
The kind of parody that transcends parody and manages to ALSO be a top-rate exemplar of the genre it's parodying - without losing its sense of humour about itself (frex Gulliver's Travels). If you read many classic children's books as a child and are now a cynic, but still have fond memories - or if you wished the charmingly ironic Series of Unfortunate Events was both darker and sweeter.... you should definitely give this book a whirl. PS Some people may be interested to note that this book contains more than one Barnaby.
(21/200)

The Great Influenza, by John M Barry
Content very very interesting (1918 flu epidemic contextualized within a history of American medicine), writer's tone rather pompous and irritating. Thus, a slog, but one I'm glad I made. YMMV.
(22/200)

Magyk, by Angie Sage
Middle-grade fantasy, fairly straightforward and of course I grasped the entire outline of the overarching plot within the first thirty pages. But the descriptions are vivid, the characters are delightful, and the individual incidents that make up that predictable plot are engaging and original. A restful, endearing read.
(23/200)

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
The good: This story was plenty engrossing and once I got past my initial irritation at the way the author rendered dialect, I was definitely hooked on finding out what happened to the characters, who felt real to me. The bad: As a whole, the book felt like "Maeve Binchy does Toni Morrison" - a book clubby kind of story for white ladies who don't feel comfortable reading important African American authors, maybe found they were "too angry" for their tastes, but still want to be able to empathize with the struggle for civil rights. I really don't think that's what the author set out to do and I feel vaguely guilty for having that dismissive reaction to what was, actually, a pretty interesting, not-all-sweetness-and-light story that I enjoyed reading. It has merits! But in the end, I'm not able to decontextualize it from my irritation at the assumptions I've made about its success.... which bums me out - the author seems to be writing from a sincere and vulnerable place. But in the end it just didn't feel right.
(24/200)

Rampant, by Diana Peterfreund
SO much fun!!! The heroine spends her childhood putting up with her mom's crazy delusions that she springs from a line of unicorn hunters (and that unicorns were both real and top-of-the-food-chain superpredators).... and then finds out her mom was right and unicorns aren't actually extinct. Astrid's dogged efforts to figure out rational explanations to flesh out her completely irrational new situation in life are both funny and empathy-generating. The violence is no-holds-barred and the characters cuss and make out and a very unpleasant thing happens that some may find triggery - but despite all of this, I was somehow put in mind of Madeleine L'Engle more than anyone else. Our protagonist is working very hard at being good (though she would never put it that way) and I felt that the characters who weren't fleshed out were actually much more complicated than what I was told about them. I loved it! (Thanks to dreamingcrow for telling me to read it often enough that I actually listened.)
(25/200)

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, by David Petersen
I picked up a single issue of this comic at some point, tried it, and thought "WTF was everyone liking about this? It doesn't even make sense!!" Well, I should've started at the beginning. The story is slight but compelling - and the art is gorgeous. Full of adorably valiant mice and suitably terrifying snakes, crabs, etc. Whee!
(26/200)